I am a writer and historian specialising in Southern African empires, environments, and racial capitalism. I also work on the intellectual history of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the social sciences. Whether through archival documents, oral traditions, or the collective memory of drought, I am interested in tracing how communities, environments, and intellectual traditions have shaped each other, and remade the world.

I am a Senior lecturer in the History Department at the University of Zululand in South Africa. I teach courses on African and southern African history, Empires, Colonialism, Neocolonialism and Liberation. Understanding how and why these histories continue to shape the present is a central concern of my research and teaching.

I currently hold a National Research Foundation Thuthuka Grant for the project ‘Power and Aridity: Water and Racial Capitalism in South Africa’. I am book reviews editor for the journal African Economic History, and Southern African representative for the Pan-African Epidemic and Pandemic Working Group.